nihilii

(In the current I27 build) Eagle Claw's taking Arma and Fury procs is magnificent. Just got 530 DPS in just 2 tries (1st was 480). On a MA/SD/Body Mastery with Rebirth. That is: no snipe, no Ageless. Beautiful. I didn't even optimize the build yet, just a port from Live switching Heca and ATO to Storm Kick, and Arma + Fury + procs in EC. I'm running SK -> EC -> SK -> CAK -> CS. I think at the very least CS should be swapped for Thunder Kick, minimize filler time. Ideally, make that a snipe and use the snipe instead of TK every 2 cycles. Might be time for a MA/Bio/Soul.

Straight copy of my TW/bio scrapper, whacking on a Pylon without even trying to understand the changes or adapt: #1 = 87s #2 = 90s #3 = 87s Feels OK to me. This is still a character that comes with great AoE, knockdowns, native -7.5% res, 2 places to slot -res procs, and great burst potential. I will keep playing her, but now I won't feel *compelled* to bring her out when the goal is maximum performance. The animation changes feel kind of weird, though. If I open Momentum with Rend Armor, I can do Follow Through -> Arc of Destruction -> Crushing Blow -> Follow Through, as on Live. If I initiate with Crushing Blow, I can do Follow Through -> AoD -> RA -> ... and then Momentum breaks off right before I can chain the second FT. On Live, initiating with Crushing Blow lets you do FT -> AoD -> RA -> FT. FT going from 1s to 1.1s and AoD from 1.5s to 1.37s should even out about the same in this scenario. At least intuitively? But it doesn't. I guess all the old chains need to be reworked anyway.

Apologies if this was mentioned upthread: what is the reasoning behind Power Crash being roughly twice as powerful on Stalkers as on other ATs? (The actual stats being something like, 9s recharge on Scrappers/Tankers/Brutes, 18s recharge on Stalkers. With damage to match, not 1:1 of course, but according to the formulas.) I am guessing the idea is: Stalkers don't have Whirling Hands. But because we are bound by animation times more than anything, doubling a power's recharge and increasing its damage isn't quite the same as having 2 AoEs. I would argue it puts Stalkers in a *better* position. On Scrappers/Tankers/Brutes, Power Crash is near pointless as anything but an AoE (unless you like it for a place to slot PBAoE procs). On Stalkers, it becomes potent as a ST attack with the AoE being free bonus. If I was given the choice, I'd happily trade Whirling Hands on other ATs for this version of Power Crash. I'm not saying this is good or bad, mind you. Just saying. As this wasn't explicitely mentioned in the patch notes, I was surprised to see Stalker Power Crash being so much better.

Yep, exactly.

Only tested on an EM scrapper so far, it seems they don't get the lockout portion of Energy Focus. Crossing my fingers that lockout was a bug all along, and Doms won't get lockouts anymore. If not, we need to raise hell until we get the same buff. 🙂

On that note, seeing as Energy Transfer can crit for a special effect and still see that chance to crit affected by +crit bonuses, it would be nice if the same treatment would be applied to CS. If I'm not making any sense: ET has a 20% chance to heal, the Critical Strikes ATO and the Scrapper Strike ATO will both buff that chance to turn it into a near guaranteed heal. On the other hand, Concentrated Strike from Kinetic Melee has a flat chance to recharge Build Up on Scrappers, and isn't affected by the Scrapper ATOs. Given that CS is considered a skippable power, I think it could use the help.

True. I expect missions will show EM to actually be even more powerful than Pylon tests, at the higher end. I'm getting a glimpse of that in casually fighting level 54 riktis. In real gameplay, we don't need uninterrupted attack chains. New EM is even more bursty than old EM, and the attack chain (at least, my own naive attack chains) has filler we can remove. TF + ET + Moonbeam 1-2-3 punch, massive burst damage and a near guaranteed heal. Tabbing and jumping from target to target, maybe throwing a Whirling Hands to clear remaining fodder. None of that damage relies on "tricks" like -res procs, too, so it makes for great potential to be multiplied in teamplay. EM might just be THE AV killer again - as it should be. Or at least not too far behind TW. Great changes. 🙂

So, I27 is in testing and EM is out for scrappers. So far I'm getting ~600 DPS on a EM/bio/soul. Without a proper Mids setup and not much knowledge of the new powers yet, this feels preliminary at best (and hence, promising). First I ran TF -> ET -> Moonbeam -> Barrage -> ET. Times in the 90s range. Some gaps. Then I moved to TF -> ET -> Moonbeam -> Power Crash -> ET -> EP. Gapless, 75-80s. EP is replaced with BU or other clicks whenever. All of these times with Hybrid active. Cliff notes if you haven't checked the beta threads: - TF now gives Energy Focus. Energy Focus speeds up ET to its old 1s animation - ET recharges in 10s rather than 20s - ET heals you if it crits. ET has a 20% chance to crit, and unlike Concentrated Strike, this seems to be a real crit affected by the ATOs. - Power Crash replaces Stun. It's a 2s animation cone with poor DPS, but I figured it would fill the gaps nicely and serve as a host for Fury of the Gladiator -RES, to boost the big hitters. I'm not sure if that's smart. Is anyone else toying with EM?

First Pylon time on EM/bio/soul: 87 seconds. With the aforementioned attack chain, except full of holes, because I built this haphazardly and don't even know my recharge times. So that's 87 seconds while waiting for 2, 3, 4, 5 seconds at times... Crazy. I'm thinking in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing, we'll definitely see the current iteration of EM challenging TW for ST DPS. - Edit #1: 90s on try 2. Man, getting that old ET animation back, complete with watching chunks of giant HP bars evaporate, is glorious. - Edit #2: got another 90s, then decided to respec to try to fix the gaps. I also forgot to catalyse ATOs. Initial chain was TF -> ET -> Moonbeam -> Barrage -> ET. Changed to TF -> EP -> ET -> Moonbeam -> Power Crash -> ET Power Crash does poor DPS, but can take the Arma proc and most importantly the Fury -res proc. #1: 76s #2: 75s #3: 80s

So it's agreed then. Two weeks from now we all stop posting, and when devs see it's too quiet again, they will release I28.

I'm probably getting this wrong, but isn't there some weird interaction between damage debuffs and resistance debuffs and resistance powers from enemies? Would that irresistible -dam end up messing with, say, archvillains using Unstoppable?

Initial thoughts on reading the patch notes: this will be broken (overpowered) on IOed out scrappers. Total Focus with Critical Strikes ATO gives you a 1s cast ET and 2/3 chance to crit on ET, and ET heals you on crit. And ET with 10s recharge, whaat?! So basically we get to do TF -> (fast) ET -> Moonbeam -> Bone Smasher -> (slow) ET. Repeat, in slightly less than 10 seconds. 4 extreme damage attacks. ~3/4 of the time losing no HP, ~1/5 of the time losing a little HP, and in very rare cases gaining HP. Perhaps I'm misreading things. Edit: or perhaps I underestimate just how much damage crits add to other scrappers. Got to try it out!

Sentinel Elec Blast is truly awesome. Zapp is Blaze minus DoT, and Tesla Cage does damage making it a proper T4 that takes hold procs. Homecoming sped up the elec DoT ticks, and Thunderous Blast gets more benefit than every other mininuke as its original version had the longest recharge (plus, TB on a 90s base recharge means you actually get a full end drain to open every fight.) Even VS, questionable as it may be, is much easier to use with a "powexec_location self" macro, and it's an ideal spot for the Opportunity Strikes set to get the proc to go off.

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification Short version: the more you enhance a power for a particular aspect, the more you run into diminishing returns with that aspect. This hits especially hard once you reach ~95% worth of enhancement.

Jawdropping times in there. @Mikewho soloing incarnate trials in particular, wow. Any writeups on the topic?

Cardiac is almost certainly the better choice in your case. Previous posters have highlighted good reasons, just going to repeat several of them: - cardiac is more efficient than agility for end management, period - your defense is already softcapped if not incarnate softcapped, so any defense buff from agility likely does nothing for you - agility also lowers proc rates, as proc rate depends on recharge slotted in powers and alphas count as enhancements. Even if you're not a player who cares for heavy proc slotting, this probably impacts you at least a little because you likely have the Might of the Tanker proc, and maybe the Gauntleted Fist one too

Elec/Bio/Ninja Sentinel T4 Musculature Core, T4 Ageless Core, T4 Degen Core, T4 Assault Radial Zapping Bolt -> Sting of the Wasp -> Tesla Cage -> Zapping Bolt -> Sting of the Wasp -> The Lotus Drops The Lotus Drops is swapped for a misc click every 2 rotations (Ageless, Hasten, Voltaic Sentinel, Aim, Charged Bolts if Opportunity is up) Hybrid ON 1:40 = 511 DPS 1:37 = 523 DPS 1:39 = 515 DPS Oddball build and my first Sentinel to break the 500 DPS barrier. It wouldn't translate all that well to real game performance, because much of it is tied to -res procs in sword attacks + Voltaic Sentinel attacking a lone target. Inspiration comes from truly stange places: 1) I see a lot of folks going for the ninja mastery epic for theme reasons. 2) A post from @underfyre mentioned Bitter Freeze Ray as a cornerstone Ice Blast attack, procced out. For some reason, these thoughts combined bounced in my head to try to make an Ice/SR/Ninja attack chain. But I'm always bummed about the lack of AoE in Ice, so I swapped to Elec/SR/Ninja. Then I considered I had an Elec/Bio/Ninja already 50, and it would be much faster to just respec and adjust IOs. So there you have it. But, it could be pretty interesting to do Ice/*/Ninja. Bitter Ice Blast replaces Zapping Bolt and Bitter Freeze Ray replaces Tesla Cage, essentially. It's all upside, because both powers deal slightly higher base damage than their Elec counterparts, take more procs, and don't animate that much slower. You only lose out on VS - which isn't all that relevant in actual gameplay anyway. Build:

Lag friendly, farm capable: Tanker, Tanker, Tanker. Tankers got huge buffs on Homecoming. Their base damage was raised, their AoE cap went from 10 to 16, their AoE radius went +50% (that's 225% the previous surface area). Pick any powerset you want. I wouldn't worry beyond that.

Order matters for me. Invincible to +4 came first (disappointment), then the Alpha slot was introduced (reversal of that disappointment). If all enemies were even level, as it should be in a beautiful and righteous world, with "con" was solely determined by rank, and then suddenly the Alpha slot level shift was introduced, that would have made no sense. Essentially, the purple patch is an aberration against nature and anything that helps lessen its effect is a Good Thing. In spite of my general feelings, I actually was kind of disappointed when the LRSF was changed from level 54 archvillains to level 53 archvillains. It felt fitting for the Freedom Phalanx to be head and shoulders above the Vindicators, or just about any other archvillain. Heck, I like STF Lord Recluse just fine as well, and his entire encounter could be summed up as giving him ridiculous stats; but then, this is tied to interesting conditions with the towers. To tell the truth, entirely arbitrary feeling, the game plays well from +0 to +3. This lessens as soon as +4. The purple patch is just too punishing in its current implementation. The curve gets so brutal when it comes to your own accuracy/damage/duration. And that is the part that is frustrating, having enemies hit more often and harder and have more HP wouldn't be a problem in itself. Doing 400 damage against EnemyA with 400 hp and 400 damage against EnemyB with 600 hp feels better than doing 400 damage against A and 300 damage against B with 450 hp, even if the result is functionally the same. The purple patch may be what we have but it is not the only lever we have, so to rely on this flawed and unfun system to try to reintroduce difficulty just doesn't strike me as sensible. Other options to explore: - better rewards for optional TF settings like "enemies buffed", "players debuffed", "no enhancements" - Hard mode group size from AE adapted to normal content (3-4 bosses in a regular group makes things significantly harder than the standard 1-2 bosses) - adjust rewards per enemy group and adjust in consequence. The game is for sure too easy if you stick to +4/x8 Council. I have never met a group running +4/x8 Awakened. I would bet money a non-negligible portion of the participants in these discussions who believe the game is too easy have never run +4/x8 Awakened. - lessen rewards if you have Incarnate slots equipped - create new Incarnate hunters, void kheldian style (I miss these buggers) Well, I guess most of my suggestions focusing on rewards betray my belief there is plenty of difficulty in this game if one seeks it. For sure, it would be easier to just remove level shifts. I don't see how that would be fun, though. You could also remove all enhancements from the game. It would be very effective at making the game harder, even better than no level shifts at evening the power gap, and it would be terribly unfun.

I wholeheartedly agree with your whole post - and disagree with the clamors for removing level shift. The purple patch is the most boring way to do difficulty. EnemyA exactly identical in appearance and powers to EnemyB has stats++ and you have stats-- because EnemyA is one level stronger than EnemyB. Yawn. Max difficulty going from Invincible (+2) to +4 always felt disappointing. In contrast, the introduction of the Alpha slot and level shift was one of the best updates. I'm glad the Paragon devs doubled down on that path in incarnate content, giving us even more level shifts while also introducing enemies that were harder through interesting ways (better attacks and buffs/debuffs, more base tohit) rather than a blanket stats++ for them and stats-- for you that was constructed almost 15 years ago with the goal to gatekeep content. Had the game continued, I bet we would have seen even one more player level shift. And likely we would have seen many enemies with conditional level shifts, too. I like that mechanic much better than purple patch. There is more granularity to where it is applied, giving specific encounters a special flair instead of just making you weaker. Expanded difficulty options would be so much better. Heck, stick a "disable level shifts", "disable Destiny/Judgement" settings and give players x1.5 rewards for ticking on each of these settings. You pay the price of incarnate powers by getting less, which would make sense becaue there's not as much experience to be gleaned from fighting foes if you're that far above them thematically, and likewise not much "fame" (influence/infamy) to be gotten for punching mooks when you're a living god.

I've always felt like there is something tied to the way the brain picks up on frames-per-second most of us, including myself, don't quite understand. Because if you go by what feels intuitive, a difference of 1/30th of a second or 1/60th of a second shouldn't matter when your ping to the server is 1/10th of a second or even 1/5th of a second anyway. And yet it does. Forget 30 vs 60, I can tell the difference between 50-55 FPS and 60 FPS in CoH in a blind test. Not to the point I will be able to jump on my seat and tell you "oh! we are running at exactly 52 FPS now!", but to the point I can tell something is off, and lo and behold, once I type "/showfps 1" I see I'm at 52 FPS instead of 60 FPS.

Very cool. I had no idea Stalker and Scrapper Claws weren't the same. Weirdly enough, I find Brute/Tanker claws to be the best version. End is always solvable, and it doesn't take much recharge to be animation locked. So every extra point of damage scale with the same animation is a win. Plus, higher base recharge also raises proc rates. Don't get me started on the Tanker AoE buff. Spin is truly magnificent with a 12 feet radius.

Vorpal doesn't need a target per se. It fires off a cone in the direction your character is facing. I love it too. The Radial side gives you +30 defense for 10 seconds. Highly underrated.

What I explicitely said, and that you quoted: "(to be clear, I am not saying Bio needs to pop luck insps left and right to survive. Just that it is an option readily available, that stack uniquely well with its native mitigation.)" I offered just as well the possibility to use Shadow Meld, Barrier, Vorpal, Divine Avalanche, Defensive Sweep, Parry, or even to manage with the native tools Bio offers. It is not a "weakness" to be able to crank 10 up to 11 in a situation where others might be stuck at 10. Sarrate previously explained the point, 1-2 reds simply do not bring the same benefit as 1-2 lucks. One multiplies survivability by a factor of 200%+, the other adds 10-20% net damage. Let's even look at the second statement carefully. You need in fact 1 red just to make up with the +damage part of Offensive Adaptation (+25% damage). This one red insp will not give you the +tohit which allows bio to slot less acc/tohit in favor of procs. We'd need to use 1 red and 1 yellow there. This 1 red + 1 yellow does not give you the toxic portion of Offensive Adaptation. You'd likely need almost one extra red to make up for that. Now we're at 2 reds and 1 yellow, call it 1.5 reds and 1 yellow if you want to stack the game against bio. That is just Offensive Adaptation. Time to add the damage aura! "Some other powersets have damage auras", you say? Well, let's take a look at them, and see whether they have the survivability advantage over bio to realistically use reds in situations where bio would use lucks. - Fire Armor: nope. - Elec Armor: nope. - Ice Armor: mayyybe, although the situations where bio would use lucks would likely compel Ice to use sturdies / hibernate. - Dark Armor: yes. - Stone Armor: yes. Invul, Regen, WP, Shield, EA, Rad, SR and Nin do not come with damage auras. So out of 13 contenders: 1) against 8 out of 13, /bio damage aura is an advantage. 2) against 3 out of 13, /bio would almost guarantedly be able to use reds in the same situations they used reds 3) against 2 out of 13, /bio damage aura isn't a significant advantage. But these 2 powersets come with notable end issues, and Stone Armor directly affects your mobility and damage output. You can't make up the lack of damage aura with inspiration use. We know from HeroStats and other tracking programs just how much damage these contribute over time. Let's round up the 1.5 reds to a laughably undervalued 2 reds anyway. So that's Offensive Adaptation + damage aura, being equal to 2 reds + 1 yellow. And then we throw the -res aura for more damage. Which also aggroes. Yet more "hard to quantify" damage that is nonetheless damage. Runners aren't exactly great for AoEs. On scrappers specifically, having a damage aura and aggro aura is an unique advantage. Notice I'm not out here saying stalker bio is grossly overpowered. I say again for emphasis, I think Stalker and Sentinel versions of bio are the most reasonable of the bunch. I believe the above shows "any other set can chomp 1-2 reds and achieve the same offensive advantage that bio has when not at damage cap" is not a true statement. Addressed above. Sarrate's post is an excellent read to understand the relationship here. Going from 35% defense to 47.5%/60% defense on a character with no DDR but ample amounts of +absorb/healing and slight resistances (bio) benefits you more than going from 20% resistance to 40% resistance on a character with 59% defense and full DDR (SR). Going from 20% defense to 45% defense on a character with no DDR and good resistances (fire, elec, rad) may benefit you as much in some situations. But we have to go from using 1-2 insps to always 2, and the situations where bio would need to bump to 60% defense would likely demand further insp use to retain the same survivability advantage from fire/elec/rad here (i.e. heavy defense debuffs, incarnate foes, mix of both...). Whether Offensive Adaptation is bio's greatest advantage has no bearings on whether the sum of bio's advantages outpace the advantages of other powersets. To put it another way: take 2 home owners, Bob and Joe. Bob owns one house worth $400k. Joe owns three houses, worth $200k, $300k and $350k. Is Joe less wealthy than Bob? Offensive Adaptation + damage aura + -res/aggro aura. Does any powerset offer this sum of offensive advantages? Shield has AAO and Shield Charge. SC isn't actually all that hot post proc world. AAO only compares positively while fully surrounded. All in all, the numbers don't stack up. Shield might deserve honorary mention for its great survivability, though. It is the most likely contender for "pop 2 rages where Bio pops 2 lucks, and maybe almost keep up". Fire Armor has Burn, Blazing Aura and FE. All admittedly awesome tools. Fire pays the price for this with significantly lower survivability, gets the weaknesses Bio has + a few extra holes. Fire has no aggro ability, so in practical terms you're unlikely to build to make a Fire Armor scrapper as selfsufficiently damaging as a Bio Armor scrapper. Even against static targets, it's notable Fire Armor scrappers don't top the charts. All other 11 contenders are not even in the running. They generally offer one or two offensive boosts. These boosts aren't sizeable enough to match up.

Full tray popping seems highly inefficient outside of an AE farm. What happens once your minute is up? For me, Bio can chomp 1 to 2 luck insps per minute and be essentially invincible against most types of content. This is maintainable more or less forever against regular foes, as even on a team of 8 where all 7 others are doorsitting, your kill rate is fast enough to convert and replenish 1-2 luck insps per minute. (To be clear, I am not saying Bio needs to pop luck insps left and right to survive. Just that it is an option readily available, that stack uniquely well with its native mitigation.) There's other considerations: - your full tray of insps will not give you extra damage beyond the damage cap. - your full tray of insps will not grant you an aggro aura on a scrapper. - your full tray of insps will not allow you to go beyond the HP cap. So either way we spin it, it's still good to be Bio. Anyway, it was never my point insps made Bio OP. I find bio tankers fantastic in solo MoITF +4/x8 with insps disabled. Bio performs uniquely well at low level and low slotting/exemplaring with Offensive Mode +dam/+tohit. Bio has a higher ceiling thanks to the extra toxic damage going beyond damage cap. Bio has loads of +absorb. Well, I'm repeating most of what I said earlier. In short, even if you have some personal moral code disallowing the use of inspirations, Bio Armor comes out on top. It has a bunch of advantages and one real weakness, lack of DDR. Maybe two with the psi hole siolfir pointed out. Other powersets have these weaknesses and more, and no powersets has the plurality of advantages coming with Bio. Inspiration use doesn't create the imbalance, it only compounds it. I mean... If you think Bio is balanced = "not significantly more powerful than other options", you're the winner here anyway. You get to roll melee alts of all stripes. I'm the one stuck looking like a walking pile of poo OR accepting I'm playing something less powerful for the sake of diversity.